A naturalized Czech colleague of mine from Canada, who runs just about the finest coffee chain you'll ever find in this here Golden City (email me offline for all the juicy details and the address), recently forwarded me a copy of a heartfelt "open letter" written by one of Kenya's foremost female social activists, the incomparable Shailja Patel.

Let's set the scene for you, folks, so that we're on the same page here: it's morning -- none of that familiar spring birdsong outside my office window -- and where I'm located right now it's cold and snowy, the early morning factory workers scurrying off to work, sucking in the harsh cold air as they scurry between the snow mounds on their way to the factory.

East Africa is the furthest thing from my (and their) mind(s), that is, until I opened up my Inbox this morning to receive my colleague's email...

Something tells me that East Africa is the furthest thing from Czech minds as well, folks, which is the reason why Kenya is the subject of our entry today.

I can't tell you enough what a welcome break Patel's letter was for me!

What with the swirling, roiling accusations levelled by the various constituent ruling (and gadfly non-ruling) parties in Czech Parliament. What with the imbecilic he-said/she-said claptrap and tomfoolery which Prague and other decent Czech citizens fill their heads with, to the detriment of being truly engaged with what's really going on in the rest of the world.

Patel's single letter, one which drove the message straight home that we in the Czech lands have been so pitifully self-absorbed these past few months by matters which can be characterized as nothing short of complete utter nonsense.

I'm sure you've been following the latest items off the wires here in the Czech lands. A quick recap would suffice:

** the jockeying and horse-trading over the relative merits/demerits of the two candidates vying to become our next Head of State (an entirely figurehead post, and with very little legislative authority, at least as per our Constitution).
** the fate of a 33-year old Brno-ite woman who has been masquerading as an adolescent girl -- then as a Norwegian adolescent boy -- but whom is now safely in Czech custody, yet whose various psychological evaluations continue to grip the captive attentions of our statelet's hoi-polloi.
** the reinstatement of a vilely bigoted so-called "Christian" MP to the Czech cabinet, despite the strident protestations of one of that same government's junior ruling coalition members (i.e. the SZ). Just last week, said former deputy PM weighed in once again -- on national television, no less -- with yet another one of his infamous broadsides against his apparently favourite antogonists, the CR's hapless Roma (Jean Valjean, eat your Les Miserables heart out!...Prefect Javer's got nothing on our swashbuckling Moravian, George Cunek).

Are we for bloody real?!

Do we deign to be proud by the shame of subjecting our pathetic internal affairs to the harsh, invasive light of public opinion abroad? For those dinosaurs in other parts of Cesko who don't think this is happening, it is now patently available with the technologies presently at our disposal.

How can we claim to be proud about this at all?!

My dear friends, it's time to give ourselves a break. Time to downshift from our lofty positions and high-faluin' pronouncements, to soberly retreat -- key word here is soberly -- realize that we're not the centre of the universe, and that our internal affairs are exclusively that -- our internal affairs.

Back to Ms. Patel...

Here's a woman with a unitary mission: to get the Kenya Police Force and the country's General Service Unit to cease and desist with all of their "population pacifying" activities, their blasting of the thousands of protesting masses with water canons, and their reckless strafing and shooting into Nairobi's idle crowds seeking to reinstate their duly elected leader, Raila Odinga, as president.

Now here's a woman who dwells within a veritable hell (today's Kenya)...not a hell of her own making (Exhibit A: the Czech Republic).

It's time to stop taking ourselves so seriously, folks. It's high time we seize the fact that our central European position offers us a unique and precious outlook on the rest of the Continent and the world, and to share with that same world the blessed spirit of equanimity and neutrality which is our legacy and expertise. What gives us the right to do otherwise?

Anything else is crybaby behaviour. No matter how you slice it, that's the god-honest truth.

From the outside looking in, we can often be a bunch of self-absorbed, selfish Middle Europeans with a lot of idle time on our hands for troublemaking.

William Golding would be proud. What was it again...Lord of the Flies?